


Stranger Alem

by TheAlemBooks



Category: Rise of the Ieta, Stranger Things - Fandom, The Alem Books
Genre: 80s, Alem AU, Canon Character of Color, F/M, Female Character of Color, Food, Historical, Stranger Things AU, noises in the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23804392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAlemBooks/pseuds/TheAlemBooks
Summary: Anne keeps hearing weird things in the night and finds a quiet boy in the woods.
Relationships: Anne Robertson/Colin Smith
Kudos: 2





	Stranger Alem

Anne keeps hearing things at night. Hawkins, Indiana is a quiet town for most people. But for black folks, noises in the night are never good. Anne’s daddy may be a white dude, but everyone can see how black she is from her hair to her cheeks. So when Anne wakes up for the third night in a row to a weird noise outside her window, she knows it’s nothing good.

She tells her dad about it in the morning. He’s tired though, long shifts at the hospital. Babies born every day. He tells her not to worry about it over breakfast and some yawns. But it worries her.

She tells Sierra about it at school two days later. It hasn’t stopped. Each night, there’s a scritch, click, clonk outside her window. It started off with one noise and now it’s different. She doesn’t like that it’s different. She’s thirteen years old. She shouldn’t be afraid of going to sleep.

“It’s the demagorgon,” Sierra tells her, dead serious. 

Anne’s eyes are wide. “Wait, really?”

“The boogeyman’s out to get you, Anne,” she says, shaking her by the shoulders. Anne is going to pee her pants. Then Sierra laughs. “Look at your face!” Anne’s cheeks burn. “Anne, you big fat dummy, it’s just some squirrels fucking!”

Anne doesn’t believe her.

By the end of the school day, several boys have made squirrel noises at her. 

That night she still can’t sleep. It’s squirrels, she tells herself, or—or a raccoon, yeah. Maybe even an owl. Just animals. Nothing else.

But the scratches don’t stop. She starts being able to hear it in the day too. But only when she’s on the bus driving down the backroad to her house. She asks one of the neighborhood boys, Aaron, if he can hear it because they’re the last two on the bus. Aaron would probably never look at Anne otherwise. He’s older and popular and has a gorgeous smile for a rich white boy. But he can’t hear it. Only Anne can. She’s going crazy, she decides, because the noises get louder when she’s at home trying to do her math homework. 

Anne realizes it’s Morse code once she notices that it’s the same noise over and over again. Her dad’s an avid hiker and he taught her Morse code in case she ever got lost and all she had was a broken radio. So Anne listens to the scritches, really listens to the noise instead of being scared shitless by it.  _ Please food _ , it says. And Anne...pauses. It’s three in the afternoon, it won’t be dark for hours. Nothing happened to people in broad daylight, right?

Anne goes and makes a PBJ and grabs a couple of cookies for herself. She slips on her shoes. She grabs her walkie talkie, just in case. And she goes outside. Math homework would have to wait.

She follows the sound of the scritches. It gets louder as she goes down the back hill and into the backwoods. There’s a wind rustling. It makes Anne shiver. The trees around here are broken, twisted in the unruly light. It feels like an omen. It feels like she’s going the right way. She’s almost to a clearing when she hears the  _ Please food _ ring through the air. She steps into the clearing and can see what’s making the noise.

It’s a boy. He’s curled up in a ball in the middle of the leaves. His hair is matted with leaves and blood. He’s her age, maybe a little younger. Asian. He’s got his hand spread out into the earth, where he’s drawn some symbols into the ground. He presses on the symbol, a golden light flashing briefly and Anne can hear the scritch again. Anne doesn’t know what to say, what to make any of it, so she steps closer.

He looks up at her. She freezes. His eyes are the ocean at night. Haunted. Like there’s monsters lurking beneath the surface. She knows if she stared at him for too long she’d drown. She doesn’t know where he came from or how he made those scritches, but she knows she needs to help him.

“I brought food,” she says, presenting the PBJ.

His face clears of the anguish. He sits up in the pile of leaves. He’s skinny, way too skinny for a boy his age. And he smells, but Anne can’t fault him for that. He looks like he’s been in the woods for weeks. After this, she’s going to take him home and help him take a shower. She doesn’t know what she’ll tell her dad. All she knows is that he needs help. She sits down across from him.

“Ahím Alem?” he asks, hopeful.

Anne doesn’t know what that means. She shrugs. 

His eyes glimmer with sadness, “Ah Alem…”

He must be from abroad. “Here. Food.”

His eyes light up.

She gives him the PBJ. His hand shakes as he holds the two traingles of the PBJ. He nods at her as he takes it, but then he gives her half. Anne’s brow raises. “Really?” He nods and she takes the offered PBJ. She’s going to give him the cookies after this. They eat their PBJs in silence. It feels like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine that Anne’s not a full Alem (yet) but Colin’s magic calls out to her. He’s a Vibrem, who’s projecting his sensitivity to other Alem in the potential area to get help. I like to think the monsters in this Stranger Thnigs-Alem Books AU are Dowshas or something.


End file.
